Learning to play a song from Internet-accessed resources such as YouTube and various forms of notation challenges our understanding of what it means to learn to “play by ear”. Against this background, this article reports an empirical study of 18-year-old students in a music class trying to learn to play a song together from Internet-accessed resources in the form of notation and a sound file. The students were followed with a video camera during three consecutive lessons. The theoretical perspective is sociocultural psychology and its concepts of cultural tools and semiotic mediation (i.e., how tools such as notation provide certain perspectives on phenomena, in this case a popular song). How this novel kind of notation was used, edited and communicated is analyzed in terms of its nature and functions in this learning practice. The result indicates that the notation was primarily used to communicate (instruct and coordinate actions among the participants) about the horizontal (temporal) aspects of the song. Although the notation lacked many of the features that the students asked for and was partly incorrect, it functioned as a central mediating tool in these activities. The analysis highlights the role of the teacher in this kind of activity and what musical features the student needs to be supported in learning.
BambergerJ. (1991). The mind behind the musical ear: How children develop musical intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2.
BambergerJ. (2007). Restructuring conceptual intuitions through invented notations: From path-making to map-making. In TeubalE.DockrellJ.TolchinskyL. (Eds.), Notational knowledge: Developmental and historical perspectives (pp. 81–112). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense.
3.
BarrettM. S. (2001). Constructing a view of children’s meaning-making as notators: A case-study of a five-year-old’s descriptions and explanations of invented notations. Research Studies in Music Education, 16(1), 33–45. doi:10.1177/1321103X010160010401
4.
BarrettM. S. (2005). Representation, cognition, and communication: Invented notation in children’s musical communication. In MiellD.MacDonaldR.HargreavesD. J. (Eds.), Musical communication (pp. 117–142). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
5.
CampbellP. S. (1995). Of garage bands and song-getting: The musical development of young rock musicians. Research Studies in Music Education, 4(1), 12–20. doi:10.1177/1321103X9500400103
6.
ColeM. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
7.
DanielsH. (2005). Vygotsky and educational psychology: Some preliminary remarks. Educational & Child Psychology, 22(1), 6–17.
8.
DavidsonL.ScrippL. (1988). Young children’s musical representations: Windows on musical cognition. In SlobodaJ. A. (Ed.), Generative processes in music: The psychology of performance, improvisation, and composition (pp. 195–230). Oxford, UK: Clarendon.
9.
DavisS. G. (2005). “That thing you do!” Compositional processes of a rock band. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 6(16). Retrieved from http://www.ijea.org/v6n16/
10.
DavisG. S.BlairD. V. (2011). Popular music in American teacher education: A glimpse into a secondary methods course. International Journal of Music Education, 29(2), 124–140. doi:10.1177/0255761410396962
11.
Dunbar-HallP. (2006). An investigation of strategies developed by music learners in a cross-cultural setting. Research Studies in Music Education, 26(1), 63–70. doi:10.1177/1321103X060260010201
12.
Dunbar-HallP.WemyssK. (2000). The effects of the study of popular music on music education. International Journal of Music Education, 36(1), 23–34. doi:10.1177/025576140003600104
13.
EricssonC.LindgrenM.NilssonB. (2010). The music classroom in focus: Everyday culture, identity, governance and knowledge formation. Nordic Network of Music Education, Yearbook, 12, 101–116.
14.
FolkestadG. (2006). Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of learning. British Journal of Music Education, 23, 135–145.
15.
FolkestadG. (2008). [Review article of the book Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy, by L. Green]. Music Education Research, 10(4), 499–503.
16.
Georgii-HemmingE.KvarnhallV. (2011). YouTube som musikalisk erfarenhet. In EricssonC.LindgrenM. (Eds.), Perspektiv på populärmusik och skola [Perspectives on popular music and school] (pp. 143–146). Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur.
17.
Georgii-HemmingE.WestvallM. (2010). Music education – A personal matter? Examining the current discourses of music education in Sweden. British Journal of Music Education, 27(1), 21–33.
18.
GreenL. (2006). Popular music education in and for itself, and for “other” music: Current research in the classroom. International Journal of Music Education, 24(2), 101–118. doi:10.1177/0255761406065471
19.
GreenL. (2008). Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy. London, UK: Ashgate.
20.
HultbergC. (2002). Approaches to music notation: The printed score as a mediator of meaning in Western tonal tradition. Music Education Research, 4(2), 185–197.
21.
Jordan-DecarboJ.NelsonJ. A. (2002). Music and early childhood education. In ColwellR.RichardsonC. (Eds.), The new handbook of research on music teaching and learning (pp. 210–242). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
22.
LuriaA. R. (1976). Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations (Lopez-MorillasM.SolotaroffL., Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
23.
OlsonD. R. (1994). The world on paper: The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
24.
PramlingN.WallerstedtC. (2009). Making musical sense: The multimodal nature of clarifying musical listening. Music Education Research, 11(2), 135–151.
25.
ReddyM. J. (1993). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In OrtonyA. (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 164–201). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
26.
SäljöR. (2005). Lärande och kulturella redskap: Om lärprocesser och det kollektiva minnet [Learning and cultural tools: On processes of learning and collective memory]. Stockholm, Sweden: Norstedts.
27.
SäljöR. (2009). Learning, theories of learning, and units of analysis in research. Educational Psychologist, 44(3), 202–208.
28.
TanS.-L.KellyM. E. (2004). Graphic representations of short musical compositions. Psychology of Music, 32(2), 191–212. doi:10.1177/0305735604041494
29.
VygotskyL. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
30.
VygotskyL. S. (1997). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, Volume 4: The history of the development of higher mental functions (HallM. J., Trans., RieberR. W., Ed.). New York, NY: Plenum Press.
31.
WallerstedtC. (2010). Att peka ut det osynliga i rörelse: En didaktisk studie av taktart i musik [Pointing out the invisible in motion: A didactic study on time in music]. Göteborg, Sweden: Art Monitor.
32.
WallerstedtC.PramlingN.SäljöR. (2014). Learning to discern and account: The trajectory of a listening skill in an institutional setting. Psychology of Music, 42(3), 366–385. doi:10.1177/0305735612472384
33.
WebbM. (2010). Re viewing listening: “Clip culture” and cross-modal learning in the music classroom. International Journal of Music Education, 28(4), 313–340. doi:10.1177/0255761410381821
34.
WellsG. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
35.
WellsG. (2007). Semiotic mediation, dialogue and the construction of knowledge. Human Development, 50(5), 244–274.
36.
WertschJ. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
37.
WertschJ. V. (2007). Mediation. In DanielsH.ColeM.WertschJ. V. (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Vygotsky (pp. 178–192). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
